Free These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly Page A

Bellevue Hospital, her hands had started to shake. By the time they’d walked into the morgue, her legs were trembling.
    The room was cavernous and cold. Long white ceramic tables stood in rows. Bodies lay upon them—four men, two women, a little boy. The tables had channels in them to catch blood and other bodily fluids, as well as the water that dripped continuously upon the corpses from sprinkler heads suspended from the ceiling. Saws, drills, scissors, and forceps, laid out in a neat rows, rested on an empty table. The smell was unspeakable—a mixture of rotting flesh, the rusty tang of blood, and the tarry bite of carbolic soap.
    The cold and damp went right through Jo, but the worst thing about the place was its sadness. The people here hadn’t died where they should have—at home, surrounded by their loved ones. They’d died violently in the street like John Doe, or behind a warehouse, forsaken and alone.
    â€œI suppose you want to see him?” Oscar asked now.
    â€œDying to,” Eddie said.
    Oscar rolled his eyes. “Hope Mook’s bouillabaisse is fresher than your jokes.”
    Eddie and Oscar had an almost jovial way around the dead. The bodies, the blood—none of it seemed to bother them.
    â€œHe’s over here,” Oscar said, leading Eddie to a table by the far wall. Jo followed.
    A man lay upon it. He was slight, with thinning hair and a wispy mustache. A white sheet covered him from his waist down. He had a shrunken look. His chest was narrow, pale, and hairless. Jo had never seen a man’s naked chest before. A faint odor of garlic hung over him. Dried saliva coated his lips and chin. His hands had a blue tinge. His eyes were open.
    â€œMeet Oliver Little,” Oscar said.
    It was too much. The poor man’s chest, so bare and vulnerable. His sad, empty eyes. The sound of dripping water. The smell. Jo felt faint. She clenched her hands, driving her nails into her palms. The pain brought her back.
    â€œWhy the water, Mr. Rubin?” she asked, desperate to look away. To look at Oscar. Or Eddie. Anywhere but at Oliver Little.
    â€œIt’s cold. Helps delay decomposition,” Oscar said.
    â€œSo did the boyfriend do it?” Eddie asked.
    â€œThat’s what the cops thought. But they were wrong. As usual,” Oscar said.
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œOliver Little killed himself with an arsenic-based rat poison.”
    â€œHow do you know that, Mr. Rubin?” Jo asked, anxious to talk, to think, to do anything but feel.
    â€œIt’s Oscar. And I know because of forensic medicine.”
    â€œForensic medicine?” Jo echoed. The words were new to her.
    â€œThe science of death.”
    â€œOscar’s a medical student,” Eddie explained. “He works nights at the morgue. Days, too, when he doesn’t have class. He’s putting himself through school. I don’t know why. He’s smarter than most of the doctors in this town and all of the cops.”
    â€œHow does one practice forensic medicine?” Jo asked, her curiosity overcoming her revulsion.
    â€œThrough rigorous observation, my dear,” Oscar said in a professorial voice. “One notes the position of the victim’s body, as well as its stiffness, color, and state of decay. One looks for blood spatter. Determines the absence or presence of powder burns. Differentiates between the cuts of a hatchet and those of a carving knife. Recognizes the chemical actions and reactions of poisons, acids, and solvents. And”—he smiled sheepishly—“goes through the stiff’s pockets.” He held up six empty packets of rat poison and a flat brown whiskey bottle. “I posit that Little drank some whiskey for courage, dumped the poison into what remained, then downed it..”
    â€œCould the wife or boyfriend have poisoned him and then planted the evidence in his pockets?” Eddie asked. “Arsenic is tasteless,